Need some opinions

because you're not doing the work yourself, getting this up and running and roadworthy will probably set you back a few grand.

it's got good bones and it's super clean. a great candidate for a V8 swap if you want to splash the cash. a bucks down V8 swap would run you about 10K easy money.

a manual trans set up is really dependent on components. standard 4spd stuff is still floating around and it's pricey but not astronomical. but if you dip your toes into the 5 or 6 spd stuff those numbers damn near double immediately. a stock 4 cog setup from a retailer would probably be around 3K.

if you were patient and slowly collected the parts used/2nd hand i'd bet you could gather up all the bits for a manual swap for around about 1~1.5K. then probably pay another 1-ish on swapping over.